[OSM-newbies] Missing "How To" instructions - getting a minimal map
Richard Owlett
rowlett at atlascomm.net
Sat Mar 14 15:39:06 GMT 2009
Akkana Peck wrote:
> I sent an offline response to Richard, he responded and we decided
> it might be better to have some of it on the list, so here goes:
>
> Richard Owlett writes:
>
>>I'm looking for an *outline* map of North America showing national,
>>state, and provincial boundaries for U.S. and Canada.
>>
>>My particular use is assisting someone else to plot some bird migration
>>data. I can see the same outline having use for geography lessons from
>>primary school thru college.
>>
>>In the past week I've spent >8 fruitless hours browsing
>>www.openstreetmap.org and its wiki.
>
>
> The national and US state boundaries are definitely there in
> the OSM data: they aren't drawn in the default "Mapnik" view
> on openstreetmap.org, but if you click on the + over at the top
> right and choose the Osmarender layer you'll see them.
I *don't* see them in the Osmarender layer view.
I *do* see them in the Noname layer view.
attempted with 2 different browsers
Mozilla 1.7.12 and Firefox 3.0.6 under WinXP Pro SP2
>
> The trick is displaying them in a nice clean display with all
> the rest of the data hidden. And I'm not sure there's any app
> that can do that. The big three OSM programs, JOSM, Potlatch
> and Merkaartor, are all aimed at editing, not at letting you
> turn things off and on to make a nice clean display.
>
> Maybe your best bet is to set up a web-based view using the OSM
> databases, and then you can make stylesheets to show only what you
> want. But that's a lot of work.
That might work as an intermediate step. As I understand the problem
definition, what is needed is an image (png or jpeg or ???) to resider
on the site's server.
>
> I recently needed something similar to what you're asking for
> (a US map with state outlines, for an article illustration).
> I ended up getting an SVG image of the US from Wikimedia Commons,
I need US and Canada in same image.
> editing it in GIMP to get it down to just the state boundaries,
> then overlaying a satellite image (also from Wikimedia Commons)
> which I had to adjust with the perspective tool to get it to fit
> the projection of the SVG image. Using OSM data would have been
> a cleaner solution, but lacking an app that can display data
> selectively, using GIMP seemed a lot easier and faster.
>
> ...Akkana
>
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